POTENTIAL: A highly adaptive core of parallel database system

POTENTIAL is a virtual database machine based on general computing platforms, especially parallel computing platforms. It provides a complete solution to high-performance database systems by a ‘virtual processor+virtual data bus+virtual memory’ architecture. Virtual processors manage all CPU resources in the system, on which various operations are running. Virtual data bus is responsible for the management of data transmission between associated operations, which forms the hinges of the entire system. Virtual memory provides efficient data storage and buffering mechanisms that conform to data reference behaviors in database systems. The architecture of POTENTIAL is very clear and has many good features, including high efficiency, high scalability, high extensibility, high portability, etc. This work is supported by the National ‘863’ High-Tech Programme under grant No. 863-306-02-04-1 and the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant No. 6988300 and No. 69473018. Wen Jirong received his Ph.D. degree in 1999. He is now an associate researcher in Microsoft Research, China. His research interests mainly include database systems and knowledge base systems, Web data searching and analysis, and parallel computing. This work was done while he was a Ph.D. candidate of the Institute of Computing Technology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences. CHEN Hong is an associate professor of the Institute of Data & Knowledge Engineering, People’s University of China and a Ph.D. candidate of the Institute of Computing Technology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences. She received her M.Sc degree from People’s University of China in 1989. Her research interests include database systems and knowledge base systems. WANG Shan is a professor of the Institute of Data & Knowledge Engineering, People’s University of China and Ph.D. supervisor of the Institute of Computing Technology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences. She received her M.Sc degree from People’s University of China in 1981. Her research interests include database systems and knowledge base systems.